think or thwim

The last two posts had links to DivX Stage6 videos. The video quality is great, but they are relatively huge files - and today they don’t seem to be working at all. Here are Google Video links to the movies in the last post:

• Zeitgeist
• Loose Change
• The Money Masters

They’re not as pretty, but they actually work. I don’t know where else to find the Marijuana growing video. If you want to do that, you’ll just have to be patient.

Stage6 videos have also been added to the older posts for any videos they have. To see a list of all the documentaries on thinkorthiwm.com go to the Archives page and sort by category. The tag to the in the sidebar doesn’t have all of them.

Get your tin foil hats. Mike asked me what I think about the movie Zeitgeist, and I finally got it watched. It’s really three loosely related films packaged into one two hour conspiracy extravaganza. The basic plots:

1. Jesus was not a real person, and the story of his life is plagiarized from previous pagan religions.
2. The World Trade Center was destroyed by the US Government using planes and controlled demolition explosives planted beforehand.
3. The world’s central banks are a scam perpetuated by bankers to enrich themselves.

Since it’s about the zeitgeist, there are already other popular movies about each part, but here they’re grouped together with an overall theme of a shadowy international ruling elite that uses religion, wars, and financial crises to keep the masses under control. Taken individually, I tend to believe there is a little truth in each of them. It’s also a well made movie, and there’s a lot to like with commentary by George Carlin and Bill Hicks and some scenes from The Network laced in.

However, the implied claim that there is some kind of evil semi-secret brotherhood orchestrating it all from a master plan seems pretty silly to me. I believe there’s a ruling class. It’s made up of the heads of multinational corporations and wealthy individuals. I just have trouble believing there’s a master plan.

Part 1

Similar to The Hero with a Thousand Faces and The Power of Myth, which I love. However, Zeitgeist makes very specific claims about where each part of the Christian story maps to prior religions. I don’t have a clue if those specific claims are factual, and don’t have enough interest to sort it out. The idea that religions evolve and new religions are influenced by those that came before seems obvious, though.

Part 3

Appears to be based on The Money Masters, which I like. Zeitgeist also mentions the North American Union and the amero coin, which have been bouncing around the internet lately. I’m interested and suspicious, but I have no insight into how much is true.

Part 2

I’m as angry about how the neocon crazies have used 9/11/01 to advance their agenda as anybody, but I’m calling bullshit on this part. It seems like a shortened version of Loose Change. It’s got the same feel. It’s got similar music. In fact, there is footage from Loose Change in it. And I think that, like Loose Change, Zeitgeist’s portrayal of what happened on 9-11 doesn’t hold up under scrutiny.

The Viewer Guide

Promise me that if you watch Zeitgeist or Loose Change that you’ll also check out the Loose Change Viewer Guide. Mark Roberts analyzed the entire Loose Change transcript line by line and in my view, debunked it.

The Viewer Guide looked like a lot to read at first, but as soon as I started I got sucked in. I started with the claim (by both Zeitgeist and Loose Change) that the government’s official story is that Flight 77 was vaporized when it hit the Pentagon, and therefore, no 757 parts were found - indicating that it might have been a missile. The movie transcript has black text with a white background. Roberts’ comments (green text with a tan background) are woven in:

THAT is what the internet is for. I’d love to read something similar for the central bank conspiracy theory. I’d love to read something similar about everything.

In Mike’s email he commented that he liked the way the film maker prodded viewers to think for themselves. I couldn’t agree more. Unfortunately, most of us don’t have the time or drive that Mark Roberts had to research the facts, and based on the failings of Part 2, I don’t think we can trust Zeitgeist as reliable source of information.

It’s successful in capturing the current conspiracy furor, but I think it needs to be watched critically. The good news is, Zietgeist’s anonymous film maker(s) just uploaded a transcript for Part 1 with links to source information. They say the same thing will be posted for Parts 2 and 3 soon.

Bonus Reviews

I’m also not particularly impressed with Zeitgeist, the reunited Smashing Pumpkins effort, or Google Zeitgeist.

A fairly comprehensive guide to indoor gardening.

Also possibly of interest: How to Conceal Your Stash (5 minutes).

There’s a Titan missile silo for sale on Ebay. For $1.5 million you get 57 acres of land with 47,000 square feet of usable underground space and three missile silos. The seller is Bari Hotchkiss from Los Angeles who bought it ten years ago.

Turns out that’s not uncommon. Edward and Dianna Peden live in a an Atlas missile site west of Topeka, Kansas. They were getting a lot of media attention in the mid 1990s, so with a partner they started buying and reselling missile silos across the country. So far, they’ve sold 42 of them. They called their company 20th Century Castles because the silos are “the hardened defense-works of this century”. Another outfit called Silo World has more for sale.

According to Wikipedia, the silos aren’t used any more because “the increased accuracy of inertial guidance systems has since rendered them somewhat less protected than they were in the 1960s.” Now most of the warheads are kept on submarines that are harder to keep track of. I was surprised by the number of missile bases around. I couldn’t find a map of all the US sites, but here’s the sites associated with Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming:

Also, if you need any further evidence that our species is doomed, take a look at the quantity of missile types we’ve developed. We are idiots.

:: Neurophilosophy :: Telegraph.co.uk

:: VideoSift

Every time I see it reported in the media, Internet Explorer still dominates, but this blog has always had a high percentage of Firefox users - indicating that you are an extraordinarily sophisticated group of readers. Here’s last month’s stats:

Since you are so sophisticated you probably haven’t seen most of my ad experiments, but last month I started putting some on the site. There are currently three:

1. Snorg Tees - in the footer.

   Last year I saw someone wearing a t-shirt I liked, and I found Snorg when I went online to find that shirt. Later I saw an ad for Snorg at Dumb Little Man. Snorg uses Shareasale to sign up websites to advertise for them.

   With Shareasale, the publisher (me) has 2300 stores to choose from, but there wasn’t much that I would advertise. You can pick from the banners or text ads that each store creates. The way the store compensates the publisher varies. It’s usually a 5% to 20% commission. Snorg pays a flat rate of $5 per sale (not per shirt) Last month five people bought shirts for a total of $25.

2. Building Green - Amazon link in the sidebar.

   I read the book about a year ago and really liked it. Since then I’ve gotten to know the authors. They didn’t ask me to push their book, but I would do it even if there was nothing in it for me. There were several hundred clicks on that link last month, but nobody bought that particular book. There are Amazon links all over the site that bring in a little money, but I used them even before I signed up to make money because I like the information. Last month people bought 11 books and I made $15. However, two of those books were bought by me.

3. Adpinion - in the sidebar.

   After I saw this service in one of Paul Graham’s essays I signed up. Give an ad a thumbs up, and Adpinion will try to give you ads similar to that one. Give something a thumbs down and the ad will go away. They will also avoid showing you similar things on any other site in the future. The service is pretty decent at finding things I want to look at. They pay by the click, so I have to refrain from clicking on my own ads when they show me things I’m interested in. So far, in one week 28 people have clicked bringing in a total of $2.30.

That income was from an average of 5000 visits per day. This site is hosted by Bluehost for $7 per month. Overall they’ve been very good, but big traffic spikes cripple the shared server occasionally. I moved the site to it’s own domain from Wordpress.com in January when it became apparent that making a little money was a possibility. 9 months X $7 per month = $63 in hosting costs so far. This month I’ll go from amateur to slightly paid professional.

I think Steve Pavlina’s essay about monetizing a blog is probably the best thing I’ve read about it. He makes a staggering amount of money:

If you have any suggestions I’d love to hear them.

This is the launch of a missile defense interceptor on Friday. The interceptor launched from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California and flew over the Pacific Ocean to reach the target missile launched from Kodiak Alaska.

The interceptor consists of two parts. A three stage booster rocket lifts it out of the atmosphere. When it gets to space the kill vehicle separates from the booster and intercepts the target missile. The kill vehicle is a bullet, meaning it doesn’t have explosives on it. The incoming warhead is destroyed by the force of the collision.

The test was successful so you won’t hear much about it on the news.

BBC’s Moon for Sale contains a short segment about Dennis Hope who’s made $9 million dollars selling real estate on the Moon, Mars, Mercury, and Venus. Prices for land on any non-earth planet are $20-$40 per acre. He’s not the first person, and not the only one. This page seems to be a good summary of what’s going on: Link

If Duck Bay is still available on Mars, I’d like to buy it so I could call JPL and tell them to get their rover the hell off my lawn.

This video starts like this:

Across the world, scientists are gearing up for what’s been called the second moon race. Behind it lies a prize that some believe could change the world.

“If we had gold bricks stacked up on the surface of the moon we couldn’t afford to bring it back.”

“This material, at several billion dollars a ton, is what makes it all worthwhile.”

If these men are right, the moon contains a new source of energy that could provide the earth with almost unlimited power for hundreds of years to come…

BBC Horizon | Moon For Sale

:: Ursi